You have found your holiday gift for the pizza lover in your life. Place your order here, and feel good knowing that 10% of all sales will be donated to Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger relief charity.

Long story:

When we first tested the KettlePizza, an after-market insert designed to convert your Weber kettle grill into a pizza oven, we were not especially impressed, and we said so.

Luckily, its creator, Al Contarino, is a man who doesn't take criticism lying down, and rather than blow it off or get defensive, he did what all good inventors should do: He took the criticism to heart and worked tirelessly on improving the product. I met him at his production facility just outside Boston to talk to him about what Slice'rs and pizza fanatics like myself were really looking for in pizza oven.

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

Several iterations later, we finally discovered the secret to getting the KettlePizza to work: adding a top stone so that pies cook from both directions at the same time.

Enter The Baking Steel, a slab of steel designed to replace your pizza stone in a regular oven. It's a fantastic product that produces pizzas that cook faster and come out better charred and crispier than anything you can get with a stone.

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

I thought to myself: What if we went all Captain Planet and figured out what could be done with their powers combined?

I suggested it to the two inventors, and the joint KettlePizza/Baking Steel oven was born, featuring a new and improved KettlePizza insert and a round steel, custom-designed to fit into its top, reducing the volume of air inside the oven and vastly increasing its thermal mass.

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

I put it through its paces this summer and found that with a couple of minor tweaks, I finally had exactly what I was looking for. Those tweaks have now been incorporated into a new model that I can confidently say is the ultimate, ready-to-use outdoor home pizza oven. It requires no hacking, no fudging, and no special tools to put together and use.

Photograph: Andris Lagsdin

It's available for order now, sells for $399.95, and comes with absolutely everything you need to get cooking. And you can feel good knowing that 10% of all sales will be donated to Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger relief charity. Included in the kit are:

One 304 stainless steel pizza oven sleeve for 22.5 inch kettles

Two wood handles with stainless steel standoffs

One hi-temp thermometer

One 14" pizza pan

Stainless steel hardware

One 22.5" stainless steel ProGrate that allows refueling without removal of KettlePizza insert

Imagine pulling this out of your backyard! (Or better yet, imagine sitting inside in the warm living room while the person you thoughtfully bought this for as a holiday gift feeds you fresh wood-fired pizza!)

Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt

I couldn't be prouder of the product, however small my role in its development, and I'm sure that both Al, of KettlePizza, and Andris, of Baking Steel, feel the same. We hope that you enjoy it for many years of pizza-making to come.

Note: In the interest of editorial integrity, neither Serious Eats nor myself have or will receive any share of the profits from sales of this product. In lieu of that, we requested—and Al and Andris of KettlePizza and Baking Steel readily agreed—to donate 10% of sales to Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger relief charity. All opinions are my own.

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About the Author

J. Kenji López-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious Eats, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated column The Food Lab, where he unravels the science of home cooking. A restaurant-trained chef and former Editor at Cook's Illustrated magazine, he is the author of upcoming The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, to be released by W. W. Norton.